1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and to an image forming system.
2. Description of Related Art
A related art image forming system includes an image forming apparatus forming images based on print data received and an image processing apparatus transmitting the print data provided based on application data (e.g., spool data) created using application software for document preparation and diagram preparation to the image forming apparatus. Such an image forming system has recently employed a method for collecting data having a folder structure into one compressed data, thereby using the compressed data as page description language (PDL) data serving as print data to be transmitted from the image processing apparatus to the image forming apparatus instead of stream formatted PDL data serving as the print data.
One example of such a method is an XML paper specification (XPS) file. For example, the XPS file includes markup data written in an extensible markup language (XML), and the markup data, image data, or font data, and the like are archived in one ZIP format.
Patent Document 1, for example, discloses an example of using the XPS file and the like as PDL data. Particularly, Patent Document 1 discloses an image forming system and an image forming apparatus forming an image based on the XPS document file transmitted using a drag and drop process with respect to a data region secured inside the image forming apparatus.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Un-examined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-052457
According to the method of using the XPS file and the like as the PDL data, however, the compressed file needs to be once transferred to the image forming apparatus and to be expanded, so that syntax analysis is performed on the file expanded. Consequently, such a method does not allow a file having a memory size exceeding the memorizing capability of the image forming apparatus to be received. In a case where the file having the excess memory size is received, the image forming apparatus needs a memory having the size more than double the memory size of the received file so as to expand the received file, causing the insufficient memory for the process by the image forming apparatus. For example, in a case where the image forming apparatus has the memory having the size of 256 M, the compressed XPS file having the memory size of more than 128 M cannot be received.
The present invention has been made to overcome occurrences of the above drawbacks, and provides an image forming apparatus and an image forming system capable of reducing (if not preventing) the possibility of insufficient memory in a case of forming an image of a compressed file having a memory size which could not be received by the related art image forming apparatus, or in a case of forming an image of a compressed file having a memory size exceeding memory capacity of the image forming apparatus thereof as a result of expansion of the compressed file.